Frequent travel is an unfortunate fact of life within my current work related capacities. As a guy that formerly had difficulty getting one of my restaurant managers to fork over the cash for an extra work shirt, having a company spend thousands upon thousands of dollars flying me all over the USA is quite the change of pace.
Initially when you first start working in a "real" job, the prospect of work travel sounds quite sexy and appealing. Getting to see other parts of the country and meet new people and clients could not possibly be a bad thing right? And for awhile, it's not. You can impress your friends on social media with check ins and photos from various exotic locations, which is always cool. You can also, assuming your clients and company expense account permits, stay in the nicest hotels and eat at the best restaurants. Hell, stick with it long enough and you will eventually end up on the winning side of rental car company fuck up and end up driving around in a hundred thousand dollar luxury sedan for a few days. Another nice perk is that you will rack up frequent flyer miles like crazy. It won't be long and you will be able to fly almost anywhere you like for free when you want to travel for vacation or a long weekend. What could possibly be the downside?
The downside that is obvious for most people is pretty much a non-factor for me personally. I have no wife, kids, house with a picket fence, etc. waiting for me back on the home front. This is typically the biggest complaint that frequent work travelers have. Furthermore, the fact that I do not have any serious attachments to my city make me the ideal candidate for being a road warrior. Nearly anytime an issue arrises when one of us is needed out of town, I am the default choice by both the company president and HR. The company president because I am so skilled with client interactions and defusing potentially volatile situations, and HR because they have booked me so many times they can have me out the door and on my way to the airport in a few keystrokes.
If you are traveling more than 3 times per month for any length of time however, I think you will find that it will start to wear on you. Dealing with airports all the time is the most obvious factor that will begin to get on your nerves. Major US airport hubs are a total nightmare on multiple levels. Sometimes it seems like you will be spending half your life waiting in lines from here to China for check in, security, etc. Airport jobs are also government jobs most of the time, meaning they often hire the lowest common denominator for staff. These are also often people that just love to make the life of a suburban white guy in a business suit total hell. "Yeah, I totally get it Shanekwa, you hate your job, and you hate me for making you do it". This is a scenario that will be played out on a far too frequent basis and it would try the patience of a day care center employee.
You also have to factor in that air travel, in and of itself, just wears your body out. Being shoehorned into the confines of a coach class seat for hours at a time makes your body feel like shit, and just about the time it starts to recover, you are back on a plane either heading back home or heading somewhere else. It's like being in a perpetual state of being mildly hungover.
Living out of a suitcase in hotels all the time, even top shelf ones, also becomes annoying. You will start to long for your own bed, your own refrigerator, and your own life outside of going from airport, to conference room, to hotel, rinse and repeat. You will find yourself becoming increasingly more irritable the longer you stay on the road. As I highly suspect that many of these blogs will be typed from the road, the perceptive reader will likely be able to tell that my mood is altered for the worse.
Then there is the ever present problem of any work you leave behind back at the office is also not going anywhere. In fact, it begins to pile up exponentially as new projects come online. Now granted you can work on some things from the road, but after spending all day in conference rooms talking a mile a minute, the last thing you will want to contend with when you get back to the hotel is more work. I pretty much only deal with critical issues when I am on the road, and even then only begrudgingly. Speaking of critical issues, it seems like those always miraculously seem to materialize when I am away from the office. It could be smooth sailing for weeks but the second I step on board a plane it's as if the entire world comes crashing down in short order.
As for partying, here is where it is really a crap shoot depending upon the clients you happen to be visiting. If these are a group of guys that you have built up a relationship with (and I am pretty chummy with my clients), they are going to want to take you out and show you a good time while you are in town. What constitutes a "good time" for most of the execs in my line of work is akin to a fraternity house Friday night. We advertising folks like to party. Sports bars are typically the bill of fare for normal nights, but if we just nailed down the details of an arduous quarterly media buy, then I would not rule out strip clubs til the wee hours of the AM and medicinal levels of alcohol intake. This makes life a bit of a challenge when you are an old school drunk like myself. I do not exactly need much in the way of encouragement to throughly embrace my dark side. I am proud to say that in all but a couple of instances I have managed to keep it under control, but there is always the ever present tendencies within me that are just itching for the opportunity to manifest themselves. I try to retain those types of benders for industry conferences and conventions, as opposed to client visits, and that is a topic that is diverse enough that is deserves it's own blog entry.
I am fortunate that I have yet to run across any clients that have been into drugs, or else I could probably land myself in far greater levels of risk. Since I am nearly always in a town where I know almost nobody, my ability to score is obviously nil, but I am sure at some point one of my clients is going to break out a bag of blow and want to go to town. It is at this point we will see what I am truly made of as to my ability to "maintain".
I have, on a couple of occassions, sought out the services of backpage.com or craigslist personals when on the road to hook up with some female accompaniment, but fortunately I am normally too wore out to go that route.
So many exexs out there have managed to ruin their careers while out traveling. A man much wiser than I am once said that "careers are rarely made with business travel, but many are lost". I try to keep that in the back of my mind anytime I head to the airport. I am fortunate to have a pretty damn good gig going on for myself these days, and the only person that can ruin it is the same one I see in the mirror every morning.
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